I think a node-based workflow, where one can piece together these operations in a logical flow, and revisit, rearrange, preview and create variations, with a real-time preview of any and all node outputs, would be a nice paradigm shift. I would have no problem working on a "smart preview" version of an image, from raw conversion, all the way to output sharpening at final resolution, with the ability to render portions of it all along the node chain to see a 100% res sample to check my work.

Good lens correction. Mustasch type distortions, deconvolution of motion blur, CA, Coma, sharpness maps to even out edge sharpness or field curvature, or correcting nervous bokeh, oval highlights, flare /veiling removal etc. Stuff characteristic of lenses that can be anticipated.

Focus-related issues might be tougher to implement (at least without bracketing) but yes, the deconvolution of lens/capture defects (diffraction seems quite easy and motion blur is on its way) seems a really interesting development too.

For me, these are the things I only go to PS to nowadays. I'd also like something I'll call 'color stacking', for situations where part of your image has a warm and another a cool color temp [like a mountain valley partially in shadow].

Why not use gradients/brush with colour temp adjustment in LR? If you are trying to modify specific areas of colour temperature that is.

Speaking of blue sky stuff, I can't think of an easier and thus better metaphor for "layers and masks". Why do we need to throw out this concept simply because it has been around for a long time in the imaging industry? It is brilliant, so IMHO, any truly competent image editor needs to have it. I'm aware of OnOne Perfect layers, but LR without layers and mask sophistication on a par with PS makes it incomplete and insufficient for my needs. Its absence in LR is the only reason I have to keep returning to PS. While on the subject of "tried and true" image editing features like layers and masks , I can think of a parallel debate going on currently with computer OS software designers. It has to do with "files and folders". Many OS designers now say the files and folders concept is an antiquated metaphor and confusing to the young generation of smart phone users. New mobile OS's for smartphones and tablets are increasingly being designed by software teams that feel we should dispense with this time honored analogy to paper filing cabinets for records management. Seriously? The files and folders paradigm works, and it ported very well to digital records management. Why throw it away and hide where our files are kept so that each individual application has to outsmart us to find our files? Stupid, stupid, stupid. This movement to do away with the files and folders concept will cause all sorts of file migration (and migraine) headaches for digital librarians and archivists in the near future. Hence, a personal plea to all the software engineers following this thread.... KEEP both the "boringly conventional" files/folders and layers/masks concepts solidly in place on whatever new image editing software program you choose to give us.

Absolutely. Some ideas get adopted and copied because they are actually very good.What one needs to be aware of of is when you are trying to reinvent the wheel and when you actually coming up with a useful new paradigm. Being different purely for the sake of it isn't particularly clever and as Jeff mentioned above, somethings in LR were done that way as it developed and it wasn't better.With regard to layers - in one sense LR already has adjustment layers as you can think of the various options in develop module as just that and then the masking of adjustment layers is done with brushes/gradients, with the masks containing the instructions instead, rather than the other way around. And brushes/gradients can also be used if you want to double/triple up on 'adjustment layers" effects.

And with particular regard to the move away from folders, the cynic in me tends to think it's not done to benefit the end user, but to make it very, very difficult to then leave the programme/OS that uses that system. I prefer to use the folder paradigm for two reasons:1: It works with humans. 2: It works with a variety of programmes, not just the programme which organised the files [or maybe other programmes by same manufacturer].

Obviously some people's folder structures are a bit rubbish, but as long as it makes sense to them......

I (and you?) tend to focus on the processing pipeline, the image processing mathematics and such. This tends to make up a surprising small percentage of the people, resources and codelines in a commercially successful application. There are umpteen factors that affect peoples happiness with a product.

You're right. Still, the more I think about it., the more I think there's a lot to be gained by doing more in the background. Lr is pretty darned good at that, and Ps is at square two. We just got background saves in CS6. We still don't have background histogram calculations on 16-bit images; we have to click on the little icon for a recalc. We can't apply a filter, turn off that layer while it calculates, and work on another layer. We can't crop while a filter is running. Ps doesn't calculate as much of a filter it needs to update the display and do the rest in the background. We can't run a filter on one open image while we work on another.

I may be one of the only people here that is really happy with Photoshop as-is. I would like it if all the bugs got fixed though.(the healing bug that looks like an oil slick when healing on a semi-opaque area of a layer, The fact that CS6 doesn't save all the time to servers, and a few others).The Just Do It initiative was a good one where Adobe fixed, updated or tweaked many of the old tools that needed it. There are still more that need attention.... (transform tool, paths, and MANY more...). And of course performance issues can always be improved.

I am not a Lightroom user so I rely heavily on Bridge for file browsing. I know many others that do the same. I really dislike Lightroom because I am using any one of 5 different computers to work on in a given day accessing files on portable drives or from a server. Lightroom and the catalogs don't play nicely on a variety of different machines. I thought Lightroom would be a great application but to be honest, I can work just as fast in Photoshop and rarely have a use for Lightroom. It also bogs down my machine heavily... And I need to layer ALL my images for one reason or another.

In Photoshop, I never use 3D. But i have made animated gifs, I use type, I use about 20% of the filters, i've been known to vector-layer from time to time, i use paths and channels heavily, I'm always doing custom CMYK conversions...

I'd be afraid that some sort of Photoshop replacement would require learning a new language so to speak. The tools in Photoshop have become second nature to most of us.

I'd be afraid that some sort of Photoshop replacement would require learning a new language so to speak. The tools in Photoshop have become second nature to most of us.

Hi Josh...good to see you here...

With regards to the above, I don't think you would be a candidate for a Photoshop alternative because, well, you need Photoshop and you fall into the category; professional digital imaging/retouching/prepress that needs the full Photoshop package. However, many digital photographers (pros, non-pros) do not. So, that's kinda the issue...people who use Lightroom only need a portion of Photoshop on a subset of images and don't need everything Photoshop has to offer. That's what we're trying to arrive at, what besides Lightroom would users need for the relatively few trips to Photoshop people need.

I'd be afraid that some sort of Photoshop replacement would require learning a new language so to speak. The tools in Photoshop have become second nature to most of us.

The node-based (dataflow) architecture could provide a compatibility module for photoshop "classic". I think for many reasons, this would be essential. You can't steal all those customers without being able to process all their legacy files and giving them something they already know as a place to start.

With regards to the above, I don't think you would be a candidate for a Photoshop alternative because, well, you need Photoshop and you fall into the category; professional digital imaging/retouching/prepress that needs the full Photoshop package. However, many digital photographers (pros, non-pros) do not. So, that's kinda the issue...people who use Lightroom only need a portion of Photoshop on a subset of images and don't need everything Photoshop has to offer. That's what we're trying to arrive at, what besides Lightroom would users need for the relatively few trips to Photoshop people need.

To me, that is probably a big reason that I do not use Lightroom. It lacks so many 'basic' photoshop features that I end up just doing all my editing in Photoshop.

I have various rendering application uses pertaining to various shoots. Typically at my 'day job' Photoshop is the only answer.

However, when I am shooting music festivals and need to process decent quantities of images that are all organized in folders (not simply organized within Lightroom), rated, keyworded, the images need a similar look, perhaps slight retouching, rendered into 3 different files sizes, with a watermark, custom naming convention, etc... I always think Lightroom is the app I need but I eventually start bogging down the machine (laptop) and get frustrated and move into Photoshop with a few actions built. I also need to transfer those RAW and rendered files later into a variety of locations and have all those adjustments/retouching accessible again (from any of those locations) and possibly editable in Photoshop at a later date.

I'm not going to repeat what seems like obvious choices for a Photoshop for Photographers that others have offered. For me things may be a bit different.

First, I'm a devoted LR user. I use the Nik collection in LR and PS and enjoy their approach to image editing as fast, easy and intuitive. I also use Pixelmator. It has a lot of base Photoshop features and other tricks I'd never expect to show up in Photoshop. Its also $15 from the Mac App Store.

With regards to the above, I don't think you would be a candidate for a Photoshop alternative because, well, you need Photoshop and you fall into the category; professional digital imaging/retouching/prepress that needs the full Photoshop package. However, many digital photographers (pros, non-pros) do not. So, that's kinda the issue...people who use Lightroom only need a portion of Photoshop on a subset of images and don't need everything Photoshop has to offer. That's what we're trying to arrive at, what besides Lightroom would users need for the relatively few trips to Photoshop people need.

Very much agree. People using a lot of Photoshop functionallity or prefering Photoshop instead of Lightroom allready have a good option. Or Adobe could just offer Photoshop light version with some functionallity removed. The big gap is for Lightroom users.

Very much agree. People using a lot of Photoshop functionallity or prefering Photoshop instead of Lightroom allready have a good option. Or Adobe could just offer Photoshop light version with some functionallity removed. The big gap is for Lightroom users.

Photoshop CS2 is still a free download from Adobe's site. Is CS2 too shabby for most people's increasingly insatiable technical needs? Do they really think , for example, their work must require the floating-point 32-bit Color Picker in CS6's CC version? You have your own answers, of course.

Feeling the fear from all these discussions prodding me to upgrade to either CS6 or Lightroom, I decided to download the trial version of Lightroom 4 (LR 5 beta won't run on my current system) and I'm finding little gotcha's that haven't been mentioned here when "Edit in" is invoked for further editing in Photoshop.

Well it seems Lightroom writes a copy in the format (jpeg/tiff) of choice chosen in LR Preferences of the Raw image whenever THE RAW ENGINES OF PS's ACR AND LIGHTROOM DON'T MATCH!

This happened when I chose CS3 Photoshop with ACR 4.6 edited Raw so I could try out JUST TO SEE if further edits like sharpening and maybe HiPass midtone contrast layer could improve things and cancel out if I saw it didn't. I don't look forward to continuously deleting duplicates of Raws whenever I want to experiment a bit.

It doesn't happen when I choose CS5.1.

Might want to fix that on the "Blue Sky" Photoshop/Lightroom marriage.

Well it seems Lightroom writes a copy in the format (jpeg/tiff) of choice chosen in LR Preferences of the Raw image whenever THE RAW ENGINES OF PS's ACR AND LIGHTROOM DON'T MATCH!

That's as expected and designed. If the LR/ACR engine don't match LR must first render the image, save it and then pass it off to Photoshop. That's the only way to process the LR settings. If ACR & LR match, LR can simply pass the image to ACR for rendering. That's the way it's been since the beginning and unlikely to be changed in the future.

That's as expected and designed. If the LR/ACR engine don't match LR must first render the image, save it and then pass it off to Photoshop. That's the only way to process the LR settings. If ACR & LR match, LR can simply pass the image to ACR for rendering. That's the way it's been since the beginning and unlikely to be changed in the future.

I understand that, Jeff. I just didn't know the result was an unwanted automatic duplication of the file.

But really I just wanted to point out how the current separate upgrade path scenario between (perpetual license) LR and the required companion pixel editor, PS (now a CC only upgrade), creates problems that can be remedied by combining a "Blue Sky" (perpetual license) Photoshop version with LR as a complete upgrade package similar to CS series of Bridge/ACR/PS.

Just thought these kinds of small issues between the two apps in their current state needed to be pointed out.

As an example just for clarity let's say those that stick with CS6 and don't go CC subscription for further upgrades to Photoshop (when upgrading LR that may have a newer Raw Engine) would now require CS6's ACR engine to be upgraded as well or else deal with the duplicated file scenario and any other potential workflow snags in the future with newer versions of LR.

this gives me a clean starting point for further corrections,and this is what I export to PS, either for doing all further corrections in PS, or doing some editing in PS and bringing the file back to LR.

Some of the basic corrections are already adjusted in my camera specific default settings.

- Adjust raw image, Basic Corrections and Creative Corrections- take snapshot of all settings- zero creative settings (adjustment preset)- export image as 16 bit psd and import it back to LR stacked with original- apply snapshot to original raw- copy all settings from original raw to edited psd- zero basic settings in edited psd (adjustment preset)

now I can open the psd for editing in photoshop and after saving the Creative Corrections are automatically applied to the edited psd in Lightroom.

Problems with the workflow:

- lots of manual clicking, snapshots, copy/paste etc.- the corrections look slightly different when applied to psd vs raw, notably the vignettes.- I can only see the "flat" psd when working in PS, I get to see the Creative Corrections in LR after saving in PS. I would prefer to see the Creative Corrections applied real time while editing the psd in PS.- Sometimes something goes wrong and LR resets the Creative Corrections on the psd after editing it in PS, it's good to have a snapshot of the settings in case this happens.